Establishment Democrats Lack the Will to Fight the GOP Tax Plan. It’s Time for an Alternative.

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Reforms are also required at the state level, where in not a few cases the Democratic Party is ruled by election laws structured to preserve the status quo, protect incumbents and prevent popular participation.

Despite opposition from 52 percent of the American public according to a CNN poll, tax “reform” has now passed both the House and the Senate largely on party line votes. All that remains is for the GOP Congress to reconcile the two bills. The exact details are yet to be determined, but what is not in doubt is that the Republicans are set to deliver lavish tax breaks to the 1 percent.

This giveaway to the rich will be accompanied by major cuts in the 2018 federal budget (another piece of legislation that must be reconciled before the end of the year) for initiatives that help the rest of us, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (aka SNAP, formerly known as food stamps). In 2016, SNAP fed many of the 41 million Americans—including 12.9 million children—who suffered from food insecurity and hunger.

The Democrats’ ability to adequately respond to this one-sided class war, waged by GOP donors and their legislative puppets, is in doubt. The party of Franklin Roosevelt today lacks the moral authority—and the appetite—to take on this challenge because, as Theo Anderson notes in this month’s print cover story, “The party’s New Deal-era critique of concentrated wealth and power has been supplanted by a corporate-friendly worldview.”

This brings us to the current struggle between corporate and progressive Democrats for the future of the party. Will it be a party of the rich and powerful or a party of the people?

In 2018, the 447 members of the Democratic National Committee will vote on whether to implement the reforms advocated by the Unity Reform Commission, established as part of a deal between the Sanders and Clinton campaigns at the 2016 convention in Philadelphia. One of the key proposed reforms is a drastic reduction in the number of Democratic superdelegates.

But will the Democratic establishment agree to cede this advantage?

Reforms are also required at the state level, where in not a few cases the Democratic Party is ruled by election laws structured to preserve the status quo, protect incumbents and prevent popular participation. Take the New York Democratic Party, one of the most corrupt and unaccountable state parties in the nation.

Not coincidentally, New York, a largely progressive state, is home to the Independent Democratic Conference, eight Democratic state senators who vote with their Republican counterparts, giving the GOP de facto control of the state senate and allowing Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to govern as a centrist. Thanks to these eight Democrats, progressive initiatives passed in the assembly routinely die in the upper house.

New York is one of 12 states that hold “closed” primaries, in which only those who are registered with a party are allowed to vote in that party’s primaries. So, say you would like to register as a Democrat in order to vote for the progressive candidate who is challenging your local state senator—a member of the Independent Democratic Conference—in the 2018 primary.

Well, you are out of luck.

According to New York election law, if you want to vote in the September 11 state primary (or the June 26 congressional primary) you should have registered as a Democrat by Oct. 13, 2017.

As Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, told the Huffington Post, “The party apparatus here has managed to intertwine its tentacles around the election law … and they are strangling it, like a tree with a parasitic vine.”

Progressives can and should put up as many brilliant candidates to challenge establishment Democrats as they are able to muster. If, however, Democratic officialdom continues to protect the status quo with restrictive primaries in states like New York, it will wall itself off from a generation of young, newly engaged progressives and set the stage for more voter disaffection, spoiler campaigns and defeat. It will also pave the way for more tax “reforms” that will transfer our nation’s wealth from the majority to the 1 percent.

An interesting concept but it would never pass for two reasons: (A) the legions of accountants and tax attorneys that would have to go and do something useful for a living, and (B) the purpose of he US Congress is to award tax favor freebies to favored groups who lobby them.

Posted by Bob Fritz on 2017-12-14 17:26:00

The progressives in congress should counter this plan with a plan of their own and really draw the American public's attention to what could actually be done if their interests were really being looked out for.

They should propose: Zero tax on the first $100,000 gross earned and 40% on the amount of one's earnings that is above that first $100,000 earned, no deductions for anybody, for anything, and all income (including all investment income) taxed at those rates.....no more "married filing jointly" either....every individual earning more than $100,000 would file a separate return, probably 3 lines long, and nobody earning less than that would be required to file).

Per 2015 IRS data (the latest available) that would have brought in about $150 billion less than was brought in (about 11% less) and could be made up by simply closing the tax deferral on foreign earnings loophole used by the multinationals ($170 billion) and disallowing corporations to deduct interest paid ($70 billion).

A one-earner household, for example, earning $200,000 would pay $40,000 or an effective rate of 20% (less than paying now in 99% of cases).

A two earner household where one earns $150,000 and the other earns $50,000, the one earning $150,000 would pay $20,000 and the one earning $50,000 would pay nothing. The household would pay at an effective rate of only 10% on their combined $200,000 in earnings.

A two-earner household where both earn $100,000 would pay nothing on their combined $200,000 in income.

Posted by martman1 on 2017-12-10 09:51:46

So are you saying that it's the Dems fault that we didn't vote for them in the last election? You keep asking them to "stand up" to the GOP's tax steal when we all know they don't have enough seats to make any difference. Every single one of our Dem reps has voted against the bill - what do you want them to do next? How about we quit whining, quit blaming the other guy (a well known far left trait) and get mobilized. It's all of us against a handful of billionaires, evangelicals and racists -- and we still can't win the vote? Please...

Posted by Viva_Astronzo on 2017-12-10 08:51:43

Joel, it's worse than you think. I recently received an email from Democrats Abroad, the group that claims to represent the 8 million or so Americans who live and vote abroad. The message lamented the fact that in the recent shaping of the Republican tax bill, Democrats Abroad had come this close to getting the Republicans to include legislation favorable to wealthy Americans living abroad who are forced to report their loot in foreign banks.

This from a group that claims to represent American voters abroad, of whom close to 70% voted for Sanders in last year's primaries...

Posted by Paul Werner on 2017-12-09 14:11:47

yes, Franken and Conyers had to resign to "free" the democrats to "go after" Trump (and Moore) .... with little explanation as to *how* that might be accomplished or what might be achieved by having done so ... except for some righteous indignation moral victory ... are the democrats planning to attach themselves to Allred's defamation suits like limpets? The NY campaign for the removal of politically incorrect statues and memorials is heating up again ... and the Supreme court ruling wrt wedding cake baker will be issued any day now ... It's a veritable 3 ring circus of saturation identity politics ... whip it, whip it good ... guilt trip democrats in believing it is their moral duty march and carry banners as the tax bill and other horrors pass .... and yemeni starve.

Posted by SusanSunflower on 2017-12-09 11:09:37

Democrats have no plans to try to stop the tax bill. Manckin (so) who often more than not votes with the republicans has said that republicans should have used regular procedures because they would have gotten 70 votes to pass it. This tells us everything we already knew.

Besides during Obama's tenure, democrats lost 1,000 seats at the federal and state levels after they had all branches of government for two years and the only things they got passed were Romney care and a too weak stimulus package. People like to say that republicans blocked Obama's legislation, but has there been a weaker president that has allowed one party to set his agenda. Did you hear anything from him when republicans wouldn't vote on Gerrick? I certainly didn't.

This is just more kabuki theater by both parties. We're being played. Again.

Posted by beaglebailey on 2017-12-05 21:39:23

The weak Democrats are supposedly poll-testing "class warfare", according to one recent article. I have no confidence they actually will do it. More likely, they just want to get ahead of the people's anger so they can divert it, or set it up to fail to try to prove it doesn't work! The weak Democrats are not capable of escalating their rhetoric against the Republicans, except maybe by calling Republicans "Russian agents". Escalation of rhetoric against Republicans usually scares away the rich un-patriotic donors and scares away the bribe money. The worthless rich are not interested in any type of compromise at all with the 99%. You can not get the worthless rich on board with even modestly reasonable policies. They take advantage of the goodness and the polite patient nature of the American people. At what point, does fealty to the worthless rich, have to take a back seat to saving the American people and your own rich self, from fascism.

Posted by ChristBurns2YearOlds2 on 2017-12-05 12:21:24

Teddy Roosevelt was president of the US as a Republican, and then he had the largest showing of a third party candidate in the US since the Republican Party replaced the Whigs in the two-party system, namely the Progressive Party, also called the Bull Moose Party. Given the context i guess you simply meant Franklin Delano Roosevelt, so sorry for the likely unneeded history lesson— but even the "editor & publisher" should be edited, please. (It is Teddy who is remembered more for railing against big business and using trust-busting as a solution; FDR (especially in 1936) welcomed the hatred of organized money as he won landslide after landslide and Congress and his administration put labor, social welfare, and other reforms in place.)